


The Sheltering Tree

by amoama



Category: The Bletchley Circle
Genre: F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 15:50:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2473793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan gets an unexpected visitor in Mumbai.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sheltering Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SadieFlood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadieFlood/gifts).



> "Friendship is a sheltering tree." Samuel Taylor Coleridge, _Youth and Age._
> 
> For SadieFlood, you asked me to fix it - I did as much as I could, I hope that's okay. :)

July, of course, is miserable. As hot as it’s ever been and wet with it. At least, though, it’s not actually raining this minute. Susan has a small chance of getting herself and her books inside without getting drenched. She takes a final, mistrustful, glance at the sky and then runs from the gate down to the veranda. She arrives intact but the weather means that just the short 20 yard hop from the car to home has her shirt sticking to her back and sweat beading down her neck. Once inside, with the 38 undergraduate maths papers deposited safely on the dining room table, she changes quickly and has Mubeena bring the tea out to the veranda. She has about an hour to herself before the children are home and she’s been fantasising all day about sitting quietly with her feet on the soft cushioned stool. 

She has a little stash of postcards in the little cabinet by her chair, she thinks maybe she’ll use her half hour to write to a friend. To Millie. It’s been a while since she heard anything from her. The rain starts to fall again, sheeting off the roof of the house like a waterfall, creating a barrier between her and the world. She stares into it trying to think what it is she wants to write. Her life here is so removed, just as she’d wanted, and yet she yearns to know how they’re all doing back home. How is Jean’s leg? Has Lucy married her policeman yet? 

Twenty minutes later she’s stirred from her reverie by the sound of a rickshaw pulling up to the gate. There is the strong clipped sound of fashionable shoes and then, inevitably, a person appears at the foot of the driveway - a _certain_ person who has no business whatsoever being in Mumbai, quite without notice. 

Sometime in the last few minutes it must have stopped raining. As if the curtain had lifted to reveal the performer waiting behind it. Susan hadn’t taken account of when the rain stopped but she does now that she sees Millie in front of her, not getting rained on. 

Millie is looking utterly unaffected by the July weather. Her hair has its customary curl and bounce. She’s as well put together as Susan’s ever seen her. Impossibly fresh and vital looking. Susan has a strange feeling of magic, because here is her best friend, summoned out of thin air, just as she was at the forefront of Susan’s mind.

The most logical reason is that she can’t be real: Susan is imagining Millie just as she looked in London. She's not quite smiling but somehow merry-looking nonetheless, stood waiting, somewhat impatiently, for Susan to catch up. Susan manages to remember to stand up, tries to stop her mind running through all the myriad of possibilities that would explain Millie’s arrival, but isn’t quite able to.

“Well,” says the Millie-mirage, “Aren’t you going to ask me in for tea? I’ve come a long bloody way.”

Hearing her voice stabs through the strangeness a little. It’s been an entire year but for all Millie’s changed it could be two minutes. 

“Sorry, sorry, come on in,” Susan assures her. Millie reaches the veranda and they hug impulsively. 

All of Susan’s theories leave her mind with the one thought: it’s so good to see her. 

She’s so real, larger than life, as always; a wonder. Mumbai is true to its reputation, an assault on the senses, but Susan feels the impact of Millie more. Her perfume, _Les Danseurs,_ is the same. Her height, the crisp lines of her summer suit, the way her arms wrap tight around Susan. She’s back suddenly in front of Holloway Prison, saying goodbye and wondering how she’s going to be able to walk away. Millie’s saying something, a joke perhaps from her tone, but Susan can’t focus in on the words. Instead she says the only important thing, “I’ve missed you.” 

Millie draws away so they can look each other in the eye again. 

“Good to see you, Susan,” she tells her, “Sorry to drop in on you like this. I didn’t know when exactly I would arrive. I thought a surprise might be fun.” 

And just like that, Susan knows, something must have gone wrong. “You’re welcome anytime Millie, you know that. I’m so pleased to see you.” 

“Thank you,” Millie fills her words full of heart. It’s always been that or flippancy with Millie, never room for much in between. 

Susan has so many questions she hardly knows where to start. Except, of course, she does: “Tea?” 

“Oh gosh, yes, please,” Millie sinks into one of the heavily-cushioned seats as if she was only waiting for the offer. She has no luggage, no clues as to where she’s come from, where she’s staying, or how long she’ll stay, and yet she looks like she’s arrived exactly where she intended to. Susan can’t help smiling in bemusement as she sits back down beside Millie. 

It’s as though the veranda was set up waiting for Millie to inhabit it. Susan’s always felt the careless cushions and deep colours reminded her a little of Millie’s room back in London. Millie was always too bright for drab London, and for freezing Bletchley; she fits here much better. 

Mubeena, as attentive as always, hurries out with more tea for them and lingers over it until Susan introduces her. They have as few servants as Timothy’s position can get away with but Mubeena is a blessing in all forms of domestic management now that Susan spends so much time at the university and she’s an unending source of information and gossip. Susan won’t need to worry about introducing Millie to the neighbourhood, they’ll all be calling round to meet the newcomer by tomorrow. 

“The children are at school?” Millie asks for politeness-sake as Mubeena recedes back into the shade of the house, “How’re they doing?”

“Oh fine, enjoying it I think. The school seems stricter than they’re used to but they’re getting a good education.” 

“And you? Found something to suit you?” Millie’s words sound innocuous but Susan knows that’s not the real question. She means, have you found what you were looking for? She means, was it worth it?

A couple of years ago, Susan would have answered by default, of course she has. The teaching is challenging, the work demanding, the maths consuming. Mostly it’s enough. That’s not enough of an answer for Millie though. Millie knows, more than anyone else ever has, what it is Susan needs. 

“Sometimes I think so,” Susan tells her. It was her choice after all, to back away. She’d gotten in too deep, it had been too personal. She hesitates, but presses on, “I’m not, it’s not, useful, not in the same way, but then, what could be? I think Bletchley spoilt me, somehow, for normal life.” 

The rain has started again, and her skin is prickling a little with the way her skin sweats in this weather. It’s easy to look at Millie and let her secrets trickle out. Whenever they’re together whatever time has passed seems to melt away, so they can pick up just as they left off. That’s as true now as it’s ever been.

“Bletchley allowed you to understand just how much you could achieve, that’s all." Millie replies, matter-of-factly, "Perhaps it would have been an easier life, if you never realised what you were capable of, but that doesn’t seem much like living does it?” Oh yes, Millie understands alright, far too much. 

Susan smiles, knows she doesn’t need to say anything else, so tries to change the subject, “And you, Millie, to what do I owe the pleasure of a visit? Time for another adventure?”

“Golly no, darling, just here to piggyback on yours,” There’s a pause, Millie gives Susan her patented false-cheer smile which disappears again almost immediately, Millie takes a sip of tea, before continuing. “And I came to tell you something. Something I didn’t know how to pop in a letter. I've been umming and ahhing over it but in the end I've come.” 

“Oh?” There’s a tight feeling of fear in Susan’s stomach, her mind flashes through a plethora of dire possibilities, but her body is suddenly alive with the feeling that this might be it; that Millie might have crossed the world, mad-capped and determined, to finally put all those things they never spoke about into words. Susan holds her breath as she watches Millie struggle to begin speaking. 

“It’s just, after you left, well, no, when you left. I was cross, upset, I didn’t want you to go. I thought you’d get over the shock, that you’d miss it, miss us, all of us, I mean. And well, that you’d regret leaving.”

“I do miss you. All,” Susan interjects. It’s all too true and she’s worried constantly for Millie, Lucy and Jean, and for Alice. 

“I know, Susan, I know. But what I wanted to tell you, is that I understand now. I didn’t want to leave things as they were, with you thinking I couldn’t understand why you left. I’d pressed you so hard into helping.” 

It’s not what Susan was expecting, but then, Millie never was, really. 

“Something happened you see,” She goes on filling Susan with dread again, “After you left. It’s a long story, I was taken, nothing too awful, just got in a little too deep with the old blackmarket racket. They were into some pretty nasty stuff and it shook me up pretty badly there for a while. I’m alright of course, but all I kept thinking was I was glad you were out of it, that I hadn’t dragged you into it, and that I couldn’t have borne it if you or one of the other girls had been hurt, and then I realised, you all already had been. Lucy getting captured on that train, Jean getting shot for god’s sake. Everything that happened to you. It’s so easy to risk yourself when you think you can do something no one else can, when it’s just you. But I felt it, like I hadn’t before. It’s not just you. My stupidity getting involved in that side business, for a few bob on the side, it wasn’t worth dragging all my friends into danger. I hate that I did that. What if something had happened to them? I can’t stand to think of it.”

At some point while she was speaking Susan took her hands, started running her thumbs over Millie’s knuckles, to soothe her. And yet it's Millie’s words that are doing the same job in return. Somewhere inside her, Susan feels herself relaxing, the regret that had holed away inside her was loosening, dispersing, washing away with the rain. She could hardly bear to think about what Millie went through, she knew Millie had barely scratched the surface of the story. That she’ll probably never get the truth of what she suffered out of Millie. 

Slowly, carefully, she gathers Millie up into her arms, rests Millie’s head on her shoulder. Millie goes willingly. Inevitably.

“Millie,” she says, hand tentatively stroking her hair, “Millie, I’m so glad you came. I’m so glad you’re okay. You’re okay now.” 

There have been times, many moments, over the years, when it’s felt like _more,_ this friendship they have. When they were young it felt playful and illicit. They were constantly exhilarated or exhausted by the work and everything was focused on the end of the war. 

Afterwards, that side of things hadn’t felt real. Just a symptom of all the secrecy, of the freedom and solidarity their roles had engendered. Of the magnetism that was so naturally _Millie_. 

In the years since there have only been whispers of it, a wave of longing that shouldn’t make sense, a suspicion of taking just a touch too much comfort from a smile or a look or a hand on a shoulder. Now, with Millie tucking her head below Susan’s chin like Claire still does sometimes, with the evidence of Millie’s desire to do away with any misunderstandings between them, Susan can’t help but feel it again. The heady intoxication of a true partnership, the thing that makes you feel like you can do anything. It’s the truth of what she gave up when she let Timothy turn her head and she rarely lets herself acknowledge that. 

What she felt for him had been so safe compared to how she felt about Millie, she hadn’t had to think about it or dare herself into it. She had been so confident about how he felt about her. Still was. 

Not like _this_ , the _maybe_ , that something _more_ they’ve never talked about but never denied either. Its Millie she hears at the back of her head when she gets bogged down in things: “You could never be ordinary.” Susan doesn’t think it could ever be fully articulated between them. Perhaps Timothy has army friends he feels this way about too, but Susan doesn’t think so. 

Their hands entwine and Millie stays quiet at her side watching their fingers tangle. 

“How long can you stay?” Susan asks, already fearful of the answer and counting the minutes left till the children run in from school anyhow.

“Oh a few weeks probably, I’ve a translation job waiting so I can’t leave it too long.” 

“We’re having dinner with the chief minister of the city tonight. You should join us. I think they’ll be dancing.”

“I don’t know if I ever mentioned,” Millie says, “but I’m a really terrible dancer. Plenty of gusto, absolutely no rhythm.” 

Susan laughs, looks down to catch Millie looking up at her - an inversion of their usual view of each other, “Me too. Me too. Absolutely ghastly at it. Timothy’s much better, even with his leg.”

“Well then, I’ll definitely come. Can’t have you showing yourself up all alone.” 

Millie raises her head up from Susan’s shoulder. She looks back down at their hands again briefly.

“It feels ridiculous now, to have come all this way just to tell you all that silly business.” 

“No, no, it was right. You were right to come.” Susan squeezes their hands together, letting go is almost as hard as when they last embraced in London but she stamps down firmly on her feelings, resolves to just get on and make the most of Millie’s stay. 

“Now we get to enjoy some time together. Where are your bags? We’ll have to get them sent over in time for dinner,” She stands up, “Come on, I’ll show you round the house.” 

And then, just because she can, for however brief the moment, she takes Millie’s hand again and leads her inside.


End file.
